Quibi hits 1.7 million downloads in its first week

More than 1.7 million people have downloaded Quibi, the app for the short-form mobile-only streaming service, since it debuted one week ago, “significantly exceeding” the company’s expectations.

Quibi was No. 1 in the Google Play store’s entertainment section, No. 2 in the Apple App Store’s entertainment section, and was among the top five apps overall in both app stores last week, the streaming service said today, a promising early start for the short-form video service whose launch plans were upended due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Beachfront Media, a video ad platform, has been working on connecting the programmatic pipes to set-top boxes’ video on demand (VOD) inventory. Now, the company has entered the market with Amobee as its first demand-side partner, buying set-top box VOD inventory for addressable campaigns.

While the ad industry continues to invest in the $9 billion connected TV (CTV) market that it hopes will bridge the best of television and digital advertising, opening up set-top box VOD inventory provides an inroad into monetizing the $70 billion traditional TV marketplace.

“[VOD] has been out of the programmatic loop, and out of the upfront buying loop as well, because it’s been much harder to predict volumes against it,” Philip Smolin, Amobee's chief strategy officer, told Adweek. “So it’s this big missing link in the industry that’s now getting connected together.”

Executives at Condé Nast, the international media company that includes publications like Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ and The New Yorker, will temporarily reduce pay and consider the number of layoffs it has to make in response to COVID-19’s impact on its business, CEO Roger Lynch told staffers in an email today.

“[I]t’s very likely our advertising clients, consumers and, therefore, our company will be operating under significant financial pressure for some time,” Lynch said in the email obtained by Adweek.

Condé Nast is the latest publisher to take drastic action to compensate for a decline in digital advertising revenue and the inability to hold in-person events after COVID-19 took hold across the world.

As social distancing measures were ramping up in late March, freelance creative director Tito Melega and German product designer Amine Arezki had a flash of inspiration during an impromptu lunchtime Zoom gathering hosted by a mutual friend.

Arezki was discussing the use of 3D printing to help fill some of the shortages in medical masks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Melega happened to sit on the advisory board of a Knoxville, Tenn.-based 3D printing startup called Ascend Manufacturing.

Soon, the pair of previous strangers were holding daily Zoom discussions along with Ascend CEO and founder Justin Nussbaum. They fleshed out an idea for an open-source 3D-printable mask design, culminating in a project called A Mask For All.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced Airbnb to temporarily halt its Experiences business, but the home-sharing platform has introduced a new way for consumers around the world to attend off-the-beaten-path events from their couches.

Airbnb has launched Online Experiences, which allows hosts to continue earning income by offering their experiences on videoconferencing platform Zoom. The virtual events can be booked through Airbnb’s website and app on specific dates and times, which is how consumers can normally book events on the platform.

It’s not just Netflix that’s benefiting from the unexpected success of its docuseries Tiger King.

The whole TV entertainment ecosystem, including NBC’s sketch comedy mainstay Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central comedians and broadcasters like Fox, is creating programming inspired by the runaway hit. Tiger King, which follows the bizarre world of big-cat enthusiasts like Joe Exotic and his long-standing feud with animal rights activist Carole Baskin, first premiered on Netflix less than a month ago.

Fox is the latest TV programmer to take advantage of the show’s buzz. At 9 p.m. ET tonight, the broadcaster will air an hourlong special produced by TMZ. Titled TMZ Investigates: Tiger King—What Really Went Down?, it will center on subjects seen in the series and will include new interviews and additional footage.

Amazon is hiring an additional 75,000 temporary employees on top of the 100,000 full- and part-time workers it has added at its fulfillment centers and delivery network in the past month.

The ecommerce giant announced the new hires in its daily COVID-19 blog. The first 100,000 hires are already “working at sites across the U.S. helping to serve customers,” but the company continues to see “increased demand as our teams support their communities,” which is why it is (temporarily) bulking up even more.